Satyajit Bhattaharya (Satya), a final year student of Delhi College of Engineering [DCE] left his home at Gurgaon for college at about 11:00 on 05/04/06. He was reportedly drowned at 16:30 on the same day in the Western Yamuna canal behind DCE within the jurisdiction of Sahabad Dairy PP under Bawana PS, while in the company of his college mates Akshat and Tapan, who were the only witnesses to the reported incident.

His dead body was found after eleven days on 16/04/06 floating near the same place where he was reportedly drowned after search by private divers for two days, Fire Brigade for many days and by Indian Navy divers for days failed to trace him.

Akshat and Tapan gave different versions of the incident to different people at different times. Police ignored the anomalies in their statements during interrogation at the PP. Their statements in the Police file were changed from time to time keeping no record of earlier statements.

Tapan admitted consuming beer and marijuana along with my son on the fateful day during interrogation at the PP but he was not tested.

The personal belongings of my son consisting of his shirt, jeans, shoes and the mobile phone were handed over to us by Tapan. The Police seized these from us but nothing from Akshat and Tapan although their mobile phones and cars were no less important for investigation. None of the items seized from us were used for investigation. They are in police custody for seventeen months now in spite of several appeals to CP: vide notes handed over personally and email letters of 28/07/06 and 19/12/06. The only purpose of the undue detention of these is clearly to let any evidence in these get destroyed on the one hand and to penalize us for holding suspicion on the other hand, by denying us the last remnants of my deceased son knowing that these are of great sentimental value to us.

Parents of Satya had filed a Missing Persons Report for their son on 06/04/06 morning at the PP. This was not converted to an FIR even when he could not be traced within 24 hours. Notwithstanding all circumstantial evidence at hand and forensic evidence they could have they were predetermined to dispose off the case as a simple case of drowning deliberately keeping Akshat and Tapan out of the purview of investigation.

A simple analysis of the last four outgoing calls for my son's mobile phone clearly shows that the whole story of drowning was cooked up, that my son was killed and that a lot of people were involved in the cover up of the crime. Details of these calls were stored in the mobile phone and were available to the police on the fateful night itself. The Police could have easily found the whole lot of people involved in the cover up of the crime and know who the killer was and how and why my son was killed by keeping the mobile phone nos. of Akshat, Tapan and two others, to begin with, under surveillance even if they could not listen to the past conversations on these mobile phone nos.

As per PM report the dead body was in advanced putrefactive stage. As such PM analysis commonly done in India as in this case is hardly of any use for investigation into a suspected murder. Circumstantial evidence indicate that the dead body of my son was deliberately hidden for many days to let it decompose for this reason. The Police made inordinate delay in sending the PM Blood and Viscera for chemical analysis and there was inordinate delay in the FSL thereafter. This made the PM analysis (vide PM report, FSL report, Subsequent opinion) all the more useless. Unfair influence of the Police on the PM analysis for obtaining invalid conclusion to hush up the case is also apparent and brought to the attention of JCP[North] vide letter of (4/29)/11/06.

PM report does not rule out injuries. Our observation of the dead body
indicates that the deceased possibly experienced some violent act before his death [see §4 para 1(d)].

Father of Satya wrote several letters to CP dating back from the beginning of May, 2006 for proper investigation into the death of Satya. In two of these [letters of 19/07/06 and 28/07/06] he urged the CP to assign the case to a detective police. He met the CP and gave him strong reasons for suspicion of foul play behind the death of Satya via notes handed over to him personally. He met JCP [North] also and had several meetings with DCP [North West] in this connection. Yet, no case was registered and no proper investigation was initiated. A request to the SHO [Bawana PS] for registration of an FIR for suspected murder giving detailed reasons was filed by the father on 12/01/07 but there has been no response to that either.